My Thoughts

Feedback

ertyu — 2012-01-30T14:24:22-05:00

I've run into an annoying trend lately. If I provide non-customer service feedback, such as a suggestion or a bug report, it still gets handled as a customer service request. An agent attempts to appease me and make this report go away. Suggestions are reviewed and closed with no action taken, bug reports are dismissed by answering the root question of why it happened without fixing the actual problem. If I just wanted my hand held to explain why I'm seeing something I shouldn't or missing a feature I want, I wouldn't be sending these reports through specific suggestion or bug report mechanisms. You might as well delete these mechanisms if you treat them like any other customer service trouble ticket. Although this still beats the other trend of not being able to make contact at all.

Cashless

ertyu — 2011-09-03T18:41:40-05:00

A couple months ago I stopped spending cash on any transaction. I found constantly fetching cash from the ATM (it started spewing useless $50s too), getting rid of change and restocking my wallet to be a waste of time. It's also a reflection on the times as nearly everything and everywhere has changed to accommodate plastic transactions. The laundry system in my apartment was one of the last regular transactions that required cash, but has since switched to a smart card restocked by plastic. While I'm giving up some anonymity, I'm simplifying my life a bit. It makes tracking transactions a little easier and I don't have to deal with monitoring my cash supply anymore. I can also rack up a few more rewards points on my credit cards. In the months since I've stopped, I can recall only one or two occasions where I still used cash and only because that appeared to be the only supported payment method.

Out of the Box

ertyu — 2011-09-03T18:33:48-05:00

In an effort to simplify, I changed my requirements for buying something new. One of my friends says: buy what you need when you need it. I added to it that it has to do what I want out of the box. No future updates, no alterations, no 3rd party additions. What is the point in spending money on something that needs extra effort just to make it work. Plus, future updates may never arrive, alterations may not work now or in the future, same goes for 3rd party stuff. Future-proofing, as it goes, is some what of a good idea, but all too often, things move so fast that any upgrade room is quickly obsoleted by rapid progress. While these general rules don't always work, in hindsight, following them wouldn't really ever lead you wrong. But sometimes you might want to ignore them if there is a value argument and you are willing to sacrifice to meet it.

The Final Solution

ertyu — 2011-08-23T15:04:54-05:00

Years ago I bought a very fancy universal remote control from the aptly but blandly named Universal Remote Control Inc.. It is computer programmable and controls absolutely every device I have that has infrared input. From the TV to air conditioner, vacuum to lights and everything in between. It works perfectly and I've never found anything that does what it does better. The only down side is that it eats batteries for breakfast, lunch, dinner and several snacks in between. It requires four of those tiny AAA batteries that I've come to hate. An average pair of alkaline batteries might last for about 3 months until the performance was unbearable. Feed it the most expensive Lithium style batteries and it might be happy for 6 months if you push it. Rechargeables you say, well I tried that. You might get a day or two out of a regular set of rechargeable batteries. An Eneloop style battery with a more stable voltage level might get you a week or two, same goes for a rechargeable alkaline. I tried every battery type I could find, nothing improved on buying expensive sets of disposable batteries every few months.

That is until I happened upon a radio control helicopter forum. Not sure why there particularly but someone had mentioned converting some R/C device from AAA batteries to Li-Ion rechargeables. You can actually find Li-Ion batteries in about the same form factor as a standard AAA battery, the only difference being the voltage. Your standard alkaline runs at 1.5V, while the Li-Ion is about 3.7V so you can't just plug in 4 of these Li-Ion in place of the regular alkaline batteries the remote expects. (Well you probably can't, depending on the internal circuitry you might be able to run such a high voltage and it will just work. But without pulling the remote apart to check or risking permanent damage with a test to determine I didn't want to go down that route.) Instead, based on the information I found, I bundled the Li-Ion cells with a "dummy cell". Simply a conductive battery shaped device that has no voltage or really anything and does nothing other than fill the space of a battery. Those dummy cells proved to be the hardest thing to find, it took a couple months to locate some. So I paired up one Li-Ion battery at 3.7V with a spacer, that combination replaces two alkaline batteries at 1.5V so instead of 3V, I have 3.7V. I took a risk on the little extra voltage assuming this wouldn't be harmful and would likely be beneficial since this remote appears to like to operate on higher voltages. Took a bit of a guess on the pairing of the batteries also since it might be possible to end up with 7.4V in place of 3V. But my educated guess said that the remote was likely trying to run off a series of 4 alkaline at 6V so it probably wouldn't matter the ordering. The only issue I encountered was the nub on the Li-Ion battery was bigger than an alkaline and didn't fit in every location, which was easily resolved with some juggling of positions. Well, success! I now have rechargeable batteries working in my remote. They last for months on a charge and work great. Cost worked out to around two times the cost of a single set of non-rechargeable batteries.

Adventures in Walking

ertyu — 2011-08-23T15:02:55-05:00

I've been out walking a lot these days. It has many benefits, like exercise and being outdoors, exploring new areas and having some time free from other distractions. This year I took it upon myself to improve the experience a little. Last year I noted that as my walks got longer, my feet were often the first thing to give up and would be sore after a long walk. So I went out and got a new pair of shoes and invested in some nice wool blend socks. That seems to have solved things, my feet are happy for whatever distance I want to walk now. The wool blend socks seem to do the most good over a cotton blend. The bigger problem these days is finding good places to go for a walk. Finding a mix of a long enough route, that is still interesting, away from traffic, perhaps some shade/shelter, plowed in winter and open is getting to be a challenge. I find I repeat the same areas a lot, although I try never to walk the exact same route, but it ends up detracting from the enjoyment some with repetition and no discovery.

Work Left To Do

ertyu — 2011-06-12T11:16:13-05:00

A number of oddities that diminish the functionality of eBay and PayPal have hit me lately. PayPal has the honour of the biggest set and worst errors.

First, I noticed that PayPal sends me notifications in the language of the originating party, not in my language of choice. I've received emails in languages I don't understand at all and have nearly confused them as spam. Emails directly originated from PayPal, like a terms of service change notification, often arrive in French or French then English. None of this really makes sense, my account is set for English and that is the language all notifications should be sent to me in.

The next set of issues is all about the differences between the website, the emails and the iPhone app, all of which I look at. Between these interfaces there are some pretty substantial differences that add confusion and misunderstanding. The name of the sender or recipient listed is not uniform, bouncing between what I believe is the "Display Name", a contact name or a contact email. It can be pretty confusing and alarming when seeing some of the names and even more confusing as they change as you switch interfaces. Not only do the names change, but so do the amount of transactions, selectively including or excluding fees and extras. Further to that, the account balance also is presented differently depending on the interface. In some cases the balance is the sum total of all currency balances converted to your default currency, sometimes it is just the balance of your default currency.

Now in the iPhone app, add another layer of confusion, the app will frequently present stale, cached information and not the current list of transactions, even though it appears it has refreshed or you have re-logged in. It is especially confusing as you receive a notification but then can't find the transaction in the app.

I just found another transaction to add to the pile. I got notification of a payment, the email tells me it's there and I've received it. Doubling checking on the website, it says the payment is "pending". That is nice and misleading. Long ago I made it a point to double check everything I get from Paypal to make sure that I'm getting the right amount and that I don't have a spoofed email.

Now for eBay. I've long maintained that eBay keeps changing their website for the worse, each time it changes. From an end user point of view, it often seems untested and non-functional. Stuff gets removed, moved, broken and just gets more complex. eBay also suffers from similar issues maintaining dissimilar interfaces, namely the standard website, the mobile website and the iPhone app. It seems that because I use ebay.ca by default as I'm from Canada, I'm not allowed to actually make payments on auctions I win from the iPhone app. Ok fine, over to the website, and it defaults to showing the mobile version. No problem, proceed into payments and I'm scratching my head as it is showing my the wrong total and about to charge me more than is owed. On other auctions it leads to an endless string of errors. So I force it back to the full website and I'm off again.

Now eBay and PayPal aren't alone in issues like this. It seems like standard business practice now and one Google has long used. Get to market first with 80% functionality. It gets customers up and running fast and grows rapidly. But as time goes on, if you don't fix the remaining issues and add the missing functionality, it alienates the users and does nothing to support loyalty.

Online Billing, 2011 Edition

ertyu — 2011-03-04T20:56:30-05:00

In 2008 I discussed Online Billing, since then there hasn't been much movement, but a little something to discuss today. While I still find that several of my accounts that offer online billing/statements only allow paper OR online versions, I'm pleasantly surprised that several of them now allow me to get both simultaneously. Unfortunately what I feared has proved true anyway. The online versions of my statements suffer from errors in amounts, problems with rendering making them unreadable and one thing I hadn't thought of previously, they have less detail than my paper versions. Another of my thoughts has also proven true. While at the bank making a transaction lately the teller suggested I convert my accounts to online billing. I read back my list of reasons why not and she countered with the correct arguments. While I trust my bank more than others to maintain correct and detailed records, the sticking point is their maximum retention of 7 years of data. In the past month I have had to go searching for records from 2000 and 2001 for two different reasons. If I had been using online billing, I may not have any records at all. There is a counter argument here that I have overlooked though, some of my services allow you to easily download your online records as PDF statements or even transaction records in various formats. Although these often suffer from the same errors and rendering problems, they also become another set of digital bits that need to be filed away and retained, as well as not being universally available or formatted. All in all, I still prefer the paper versions, but like the flexibility to refer to the online versions when they are available.

Ticket Fees

ertyu — 2011-01-24T11:30:40-05:00

This is just getting ridiculous! I know to expect to, but purchasing tickets from Ticket Master seems to incur far more fees than an airline flight now and they are all nonsensical and meaningless money grabs. Here's my latest example:
Ticket Price: $29.50
Facility Charge: $0.75
Convenience Charge: $3.25
Order Processing Fee: $2.50
Mandatory Coat Check: $2.00

Total Extra Fees: $8.50 or nearly 30% markup on the base ticket price.

Eyeglasses Online, the Second Order

ertyu — 2011-01-10T16:59:10-05:00

So I got this strange package in the mail...

After the successful purchase of my first pair of glasses online (Eyeglasses Online) I was looking for a set of prescription sunglasses. Unfortunately Clearly Contacts doesn't offer tinting on any lenses required for my prescription so I was looking elsewhere. After my initial research Zenni Optical seemed like the place to go for a prescription tint, but I just never pulled the trigger on a purchase there for some reason. Then one day an email dropped into my inbox from Goggles4U with an interesting sale (PS: when I'm shopping online I often find it useful to sign up for all the newsletters at places I'm interested in so I'm alerted to coupons and sales). Goggles4U wasn't on my list of vendors offering prescription tint, as in my research I couldn't find information on getting tint on the lenses required for my prescription. The website has an annoying pop-up live chat window, so what the heck I ask and sure enough I can order tint as required. The stumbling blocks continue though. The "Express Checkout" won't let me select my prescription and the "Wizard Checkout" won't find lenses tinted in my prescription. No bother says the support rep, just order and put all the info in a note and they will make it happen. With the sale coupon the total came out to $42. Zenni was in the $60 range and Clearly Contacts was about $160 for non-tinted. Note that I didn't get as high end a lens for Goggles4U or Zenni as compared to Clearly Contacts. I only ended up getting the emailed Paypal receipt and no other order information, which I dislike as I would like to have a copy of the invoice to store. About 12 days later I got this strange package in the mail. It was a cloth covered hunk of styrofoam, stitched shut and then sealed with wax. I had been waiting for some gadget doohickeys I had ordered from Hong Kong and I thought this was the package, but upon looking closer I noticed it had been sent from Pakistan. So I open it up and it's the glasses I had ordered from Goggles4U. Oddly they have an American address and are billed as American Eye Vision Inc. Oh well, the glasses work great and were just what I ordered, not at all bad for $42.

Winter Tire Report

ertyu — 2010-12-22T12:20:58-05:00

Having left the swap over from summer to winter tires till late November this year, I got to experience both sets of my tires in winter conditions back to back. My stock Continental "All-seasons" that were great the first winter are now next to useless, having worn faster than expected. Not much traction on ice and no hope in snow with so little tread left. Driving in these conditions is slow and tedious, the tires often spinning -- in snow it's the only way to move and the advanced traction aids (ABS, traction control, stability control) kicking in all the time. Driving one residential road on the way to the tire swap was comfortable in the 30-40km/h range with traction aids still sneaking in.

Swapped the Bridgestone winter tires on and I gave it a spin around the same block trying to push the limits, 60-70km/h is still comfortable and the traction aids weren't even kicking in yet. On the way home I looked for many of the same snow conditions that almost got me stuck the previous day, again, I can't even get the traction control to activate as the tires are gripping well. The deep lugs sure help with that. On icy conditions I've certainly noticed additional grip as well. Unfortunately I immediately noticed my driving style adjusting to the improved grip and negating some of the gain, but I'm still nowhere near the edge of these tires, while I would be driving over the edge on the summer tires constantly.

Faulty Web References

ertyu — 2010-11-20T19:47:51-05:00

On several of the rare occasions when I want to find out more information about something on the news or in an advertisement and head to the web references listed, I've failed to find the information about what was featured. If I care enough, I'll resort to asking Google to find the information if I can remember what it was, I've already had to remember the URL, remembering the content too is unlikely. I understand that listing a simple URL is much easier to remember, usually just the base xyz.com, but if I can't spot what I'm looking for on the front page, I'm not going to find it at all. So get with it and understand your audience, your impact is entirely lost if you fail to hold on to any interest you've captured.

Terminal Experience

ertyu — 2010-11-18T11:08:06-05:00

I remember using debit terminals back in the early 90s when they first started they arrive. The technology was new and was a powerful and useful alternative to other payment methods available. Nearly 20 years later the technology doesn't seem to have changed much, but the user experience is approaching total crap. In the early days the terminals did one thing, accept payments via debit cards. They had a very simple interface: a small LCD to present simple instructions, a numeric keypad to enter PIN numbers and basic OK and cancel buttons. It was obvious and intuitive what to do with them and they just worked.

The modern debit/credit terminal has a few new features but runs at an abysmal speed. Forcing users to extensively wait, far longer than I ever remember waiting for the old terminals, even though current terminals are connected to a much faster network and have access to vastly superior hardware. The interface on a current terminal has exploded in both number of buttons and variety of different terminal styles and software. One of the most annoying and complex user interface traits of the modern machine is the variety of confirmation buttons used during a single transaction. It is not uncommon to use 3 different buttons to confirm actions during a transaction, often these buttons are small and have only soft labels. This is just plain stupid and a horrible interface design. The variety of terminal designs and operation is bewildering to a user. Every time I use a terminal I have to look at it carefully to figure out what to do, and I have to keep doing that for every step. Not to mention I have to continuously poll it to see if I should be waiting or if I forgot to push some button I didn't see. There seems to be very little in common between the various hardware and even less between the software on the same hardware. The other oddity is that these terminals need to be told to look for a credit or a debit card, I don't understand why they just can't read the card and then determine which it is. If they are told one thing and get a card of the other, they know it's wrong, so why can't they auto-detect?

Another two things have been bothering me lately about these terminals. On most machines when I use my Mastercard, I get asked what language I want to use and on every one the method to change and/or select a language is different. So not only am I wasting time selecting what should be a one time setting, I have to struggle to figure out how to do it each time. The other issue pops up on some machines and not others. Many machines just change the screen once the transaction is complete and remind you to remove your card. However, several varieties of these machines have an additional screen in between steps that indicates something is complete or ok and NOT to remove your card. Well, the message is entirely useless as I don't care what step the machine has completed, since as a user I just have to keep waiting. The message can easily cause problems as I might see the screen change and with it containing the words 'remove' and 'card', I might just do that. But once again I carefully have to study each machine and each screen carefully every time and react. None of them just work how I would expect.

I really don't understand how they have made these terminals worse. They are doing the same job they always have, albeit with one or two minor new features. Technology has skyrocketed ahead and these terminals seem to be left in the dust, forcing consumers and business owners to suffer.

The Clock Project

ertyu — 2010-09-30T14:25:54-05:00

Years ago I was looking for a new project and I figured I'd like to build something electronic. The engineer in me said I would have to build something useful and the end result was the only thing I could come up with, a clock. But to make it worth the cost and my time and effort it would need to be about the best clock you could think of. It would have to have a fairly unique and excellent display and it would have to be self-setting.

The iPhone Experience

ertyu — 2010-08-15T17:02:07-05:00

Sometime around January I had decided that I would upgrade to the next iPhone model once it was released. I wasn't really concerned as to what it was as I'm sure it would be better than the previous model which was already great. I had toyed with the idea of upgrading last year, but the timing and contract plans weren't quite right. But this time around, everything was aligning, my contract was nearly up and plans that met my criteria were available. So with that decision already made I carefully watched the news for anything on the upcoming iPhone model. It slowly trickled out until Apple made the official announcement of the iPhone 4. It was a little disappointing that Canada would be in the second wave of deliveries, but what is another few weeks when I've been waiting months. Rogers soon put up the new iPhone teaser on their webpage with a form to sign up to receive more information as soon as it was available. I obviously put my name down right away. As time ticked along, the first wave of deliveries went out in the US and the news started floating in. Apple shipped large quantities of the phones, but still wasn't able to keep up with demand, nearly instantly selling out. And then came the antenna issues. That was a little of a downer to have an imperfection already identified, but not too bad of an issue really, when analyzed. Time continued to pass and still no information was available about the Canadian release. Rogers sends out an email to all those that signed up: We have no information, stop calling us. Apple holds a press conference to address the Antenna issues, announce free cases and the Canadian date: July 30.

Eyeglasses Online

ertyu — 2010-07-06T13:28:32-05:00

I haven't considered shopping online for glasses until just recently. So far I felt it was worth it to pay any mark up and be able to shop in person and ensure I was getting the absolute best since I wear glasses all day every day. But a couple things changed my mind recently. When I went shopping for glasses at the doctors office, they didn't really have that great a selection and they weren't really all the interested in selling me some. Since I didn't really find anything I wanted and nothing else was forth coming there, I decided to leave without buying anything. When I got home, it started to occur to me that I could actually shop online. But this was only because of a few circumstances that hadn't been true before. While browsing for frames the ones I ended up picking were nearly identical in shape and size to what I was currently wearing and when I got home, I searched through my old frames to find my last pair were also nearly identical as well. Furthermore most of my previous frames were of the same size. That narrowed it right now, it would be easy to find frames of the same shape and size online instead of having to try them on in person. And secondly I now had an up to date prescription in hand. So I browsed a few places online and could generally find a suitable frame at each one. From past experience I know that my prescription and lens requirements won't work with the advertised prices on most sites but still I found the prices to be vastly cheaper. To the point where I would save hundreds of dollars.

I looked around a few of the bigger sites online and there were lots of comparable options. I had it narrowed down to just a handful based on who had the best prices for the top end lenses I need/want, namely Zenni Optical, 39DollarGlasses.com and EyeBuyDirect.com. I ended up settling on clearlycontacts.ca. They are the only one really setup especially for Canada, and offer a 100% refund on returns. The coupon code I found at RFD for 20% off pushed their prices in line with the others from the US (Ask me for a referral and 10% off coupon). The only gotcha I found so far with is the handling and insurance fee tacked on at the very end...not quite free shipping after all. Some interesting things I noticed while shopping, almost every place I looked at a fairly limited set of frame options although I was able to find a couple I liked at each place, but none of them really had any of the same frames. The prices for everything from frames to lenses to coatings varied quite dramatically between the different vendors. Several places have a virtual try on feature where you can upload a picture and overlay the frames on top of it, which can be quite handy. Picking out frames still proved to be quite challenging even with the very limited parameters I was using. Even when looking very closely at all the pictures and options for viewing the frames, subtle differences were easy to miss sometimes. But in the end I got something I'm quite satisfied with for around $400 less than the alternative. I'm looking to try another location to buy some prescription sunglasses as well.

Update: About a month after receiving my glasses from Clearly Contacts I managed to trip and fall into a rock face first. There was a little damage to the glasses as a result, some scrapped paint and a bent nose piece. I emailed Clearly Contacts asking how I could buy a replacement frame. But instead I simply got an email back telling me to send the glasses in and they would swap out the frames. A short time later and they sent me a brand new set of frames and lenses for no charge.